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My mother said that one of the first words I pronounced was Europe. My father was reading the weather forecast from a newspaper sitting by the stove one evening. The forecast predicted severe frosts in Europe and I repeated the word often making my parents laugh. My parents spoke Yiddish and my mother told me that I also knew few words in Yiddish, but forgot them in the course of time. One of my first childhood memories is a trip to Mogilyov with my mother. I remember my 60-year old grandfather, who seemed very old to me, and my grandmother Cherna. I also remember how my aunt Zina (she was 6) and I picked little cucumbers in the garden and brought them to grandmother Cherna and she told Zina off for picking such little baby cucumbers.
My mother was a housewife, when we lived in Kharkov. My father was a member of the Communist Party that he joined in 1928. Thought he had little education he was a born manager. From a plain worker he was promoted to supervisor of the shoe shop providing services the families of government officials. In 1934 the capital of Ukraine moved from Kharkov to Kiev and our family moved there, too. My father was appointed director of the ‘Kommunar’ governmental shoe shop.
In 1934 we moved to Kiev. My mother’s sister Olga and grandmother Cherna had moved to Kiev from Mogilyov one year before us after grandfather Yankel-Avrum died. When we got off the train, we went to their place and I remember sitting by our luggage outside with my mother, when my father got a telegram. It said that his mother Revekka was dying. My father left immediately, but before he arrived his mother died.
We stayed few days with aunt Olga and grandmother Cherna before my father received a big room in a seven-bedroom communal apartment on the fourth (last) floor of a brick house located in the yard. This was a big apartment with high ceilings and two small rooms where servants stayed during the czarist times. Now there were seven families living in bigger rooms and two single women in the smaller rooms. There were 7 tables in the big kitchen with primus stoves [Primus stove -a small portable stove with a container for about 1 liter of kerosene that was pumped into burners] on each of them. We kept all utensils in our room and each time we had to take them to the kitchen to do the cooking and at the end marched back taking them back into the room. There was a tap and one toilet with a schedule for its use on the door. There was a bathtub in the apartment, but nobody wanted to use it. Our neighbors only did their laundry in it. Once a week we went to the public bathroom – this was a mandatory ritual with all Kievites. There was a doorbell on the front door to the apartment and the list of all tenants with indication of the number of rings – our visitors had to ring twice. Basically we were doing well. In 1938 we bought a wireless and a radio player – expensive acquisitions at that time.
My mother was a housewife, when we lived in Kharkov. My father was a member of the Communist Party that he joined in 1928. Thought he had little education he was a born manager. From a plain worker he was promoted to supervisor of the shoe shop providing services the families of government officials. In 1934 the capital of Ukraine moved from Kharkov to Kiev and our family moved there, too. My father was appointed director of the ‘Kommunar’ governmental shoe shop.
In 1934 we moved to Kiev. My mother’s sister Olga and grandmother Cherna had moved to Kiev from Mogilyov one year before us after grandfather Yankel-Avrum died. When we got off the train, we went to their place and I remember sitting by our luggage outside with my mother, when my father got a telegram. It said that his mother Revekka was dying. My father left immediately, but before he arrived his mother died.
We stayed few days with aunt Olga and grandmother Cherna before my father received a big room in a seven-bedroom communal apartment on the fourth (last) floor of a brick house located in the yard. This was a big apartment with high ceilings and two small rooms where servants stayed during the czarist times. Now there were seven families living in bigger rooms and two single women in the smaller rooms. There were 7 tables in the big kitchen with primus stoves [Primus stove -a small portable stove with a container for about 1 liter of kerosene that was pumped into burners] on each of them. We kept all utensils in our room and each time we had to take them to the kitchen to do the cooking and at the end marched back taking them back into the room. There was a tap and one toilet with a schedule for its use on the door. There was a bathtub in the apartment, but nobody wanted to use it. Our neighbors only did their laundry in it. Once a week we went to the public bathroom – this was a mandatory ritual with all Kievites. There was a doorbell on the front door to the apartment and the list of all tenants with indication of the number of rings – our visitors had to ring twice. Basically we were doing well. In 1938 we bought a wireless and a radio player – expensive acquisitions at that time.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Isabella Karanchuk